How to Treat the Freshmen, 1495

 

They get smaller every year.
Codex Manesse (c. 1304)

A little advice for the new school year, reposted from http://askthepast.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-treat-freshmen-1495.html

"Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen. Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely, any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are leaving after matriculation."

Leipzig University Statute (1495)

A friendly reminder for the new academic year: please resist the temptation to terrify the freshmen with spooky voices, at least for the first few weeks.

Questions and Answers

     This evening I had a conversation I will never forget. I was sitting beside a dear friend, ripe in years and equally ripe in wisdom, who asked about the funeral I officiated three days ago. “I don’t know” I responded quietly, “I just feel like the bible leaves me with more questions than answers.” As I sat there frustrated by the things I don’t understand, I waited quietly for his disappointment. I waited for him to tell me I’d make a terrible priest. Instead, his answer surprised me. “Maybe that’s why I like you” he said, more to himself than to me. “I have a lot of questions about the bible myself. When something terrible happens, there are no easy answers.”

     I couldn’t believe it. This man has been a devoted Christian all his life and holds the respect of many in his community. How could he have questions or, dare I say it, doubt? The answer, I realize, is that my friend has suffered a great deal on this earth. Christian or not, he isn’t naïve enough to pretend to have all the answers. Perhaps learning to follow Christ is more about learning to ask good questions than finding all the answers.

     Preaching at the funeral this week, I felt a little stupid, as if people were looking to me to give completed answers I couldn’t possibly provide. And I wasn’t about to pretend I could; I hate hypocrisy. Instead, I pointed them toward a mystery, something I knew was there though I didn’t understand it. I believe in things like the goodness of God, the coming kingdom, and the resurrection of the dead because I can feel them happening, not because I can explain what’s going on. Sometimes I don’t have a blessed clue.

     Watching for the signs of God’s kingdom is a bit like learning to sense the coming of a storm. When I was a kid growing up on the farm, I learned to sense the change in wind that signaled the need to close the barn right away.  I knew that when the animals began to act a little differently or the sky began to change, it was time to put away my toys and head inside. But to this day, I couldn’t tell you a thing about how the storm works. Or why we shut up the barn some days only the have the storm pass in another direction.

     Life in God is a similar mystery which can only be known by being experienced. Just as I can’t explain what it’s like to be playing in the field and suddenly sense that a storm is on the way, so it is very difficult to explain the mysteries of life and death in words. While I stood over the deceased this week with more questions than answers, however, God showed up. Later I was commended for a well-orchestrated funeral, but all I did was ask questions. I think that’s what they call faith- because faith only dies when we no longer wonder at the mystery, when we stop showing up, and when we stop asking questions.

On Tattoos and Vocation

          I had just turned 20 and I’d been debating between two tattoos for months. Should my first tattoo be the word “justice,” my greatest goal and passion, or should it be God’s sacred Hebrew name? Quite unexpectedly, my tattoo conundrum was forcing me to do some serious thinking about what was most important to me and why. One night as I sat praying in my dorm room I reminded God that the only reason justice was so important to me was that I served a God of justice who called me to reflect that image. My God was the God of the oppressed, a God of action, not of passive religious reflection. “In fact,” I remember thinking to myself, “you really kind of need me. Your pursuit of justice in the world isn’t going very well at the moment.”

What happened next is a moment I will never forget. God did not seem angry or annoyed with me over my youthful arrogance, but just as a mentor might gently answer an over-confident teenager, God asked, “Is it your justice that you’ve committed yourself to, or is it mine?” I was taken aback by the question. Such a possibility had never occurred to me before. Could it be that God’s plan for the world was different from mine? Was my elaborate plan for eradicating poverty in my lifetime not only statistically impossible but also a symptom of prideful distrust in what God was up to? Did I really believe God was enough for the world?

As I continued to ponder these questions, I decided to get both tattoos and experiment with the idea that God might actually be enough. Enough for me, enough for the poor, enough for the world. I asked questions about the implications of the crucifixion for community development and what the resurrection meant for my country’s exorbitant wealth. I started taking seminary classes and debated over what it meant to give God all of my life, including my desire to serve.

The journey that ensued took me to a mission, a slum, a convent, a community house, and finally- to a bishop’s office. From there I learned about “the ordination of baptism,” the idea that in our baptisms we are recruited into God’s service to represent and honour God in a particular way, depending on our gifts and abilities. This is what we call “vocation,” said the bishop, and my particular vocation would combine both my tattoos perfectly: I would finish seminary and become a priest.

The next part of this journey has begun with the deaconate, a kind of service which grounds all others because it includes a solemn vow to “be Jesus” to the least of these: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the young. A deacon is supposed to portray for others, priests, laity, and even bishops, what being Jesus to the world looks like. As you might guess, I am in no way equipped to take on such a role. Yet I feel greater confidence to jump into this now than I did seven years ago, because I have no incredible plan for changing the world now; I only have Jesus. And that, my friends, is enough.